The major focus of this award will be to prepare an individual who has demonstrated clinical, academic and administrative abilities to expand these abilities to also include research skills in the area of geriatric mental health. The long-term aim is to prepare an individual who can then function as a geriatric mental health researcher; to develop other geriatric mental health researchers; and introduce research findings into clinical and academic settings. The nominee will: 1) broaden the theoretical knowledge base in research design, methodology and analysis by enrolling in formal course-work; 2) establish an extended research program focusing on hope in geriatric populations; 3) increase the scope of knowledge in applied research by participating in a study with a senior researcher; 4) develop other geriatric mental health researchers and disseminate research findings to clinicians, educators and researchers. Hope has been acknowledged as important for geriatric mental health; however, limited research in this area exists. The major thrust of this study will be to explore how hope manifests itself with a variety of older populations such as a: community-based population, hospitalized psychiatric population, and group of family members with an Alzheimer's patient. The nominee will be supervised by an interdisciplinary team of experts at Rush-Presbyterian-St. Luke's Medical Center and will utilize the already established inpatient geropsychiatric unit at Johnston R. Bowman Health Center for the Elderly as a research base. Attaining these objectives will provide the basis for developing a graduate level geriatric mental health minor in the College of Nursing.